Blog by Lucy Courtenay

So How Do You Know the Bride?

I’m sure there are plenty of you out there with wedding anniversaries today, it being May and all. Congratulations all round. But for those of you at the maybe-getting-engaged stage: if you live in Britain, think VERY hard before getting married in May.

May is hopelessly unpredictable. Of course, every month in Britain is unpredictable, but May is particularly bad because it’s full of such promise, making the disappointment all the crueller – particularly if this year is anything to go by. If your dress doesn’t blow over your head, your shoes will sink into the mud and no one will concentrate on the service because they are all so cold and cursing their sleeveless dresses and 5-denier tights and desperate weather-optimism. I have of course been to some lovely May weddings when all that truly mattered was the bride and groom and the whereabouts of the wine, but I can’t help looking out of the window today and thinking: well, THIS was a sure thing.

She stood all alone at the wedding

And toyed with her celery pate

She felt rather sick of the prawn on a stick

That she’d dolloped too deep in the satay.

She’d suffered a social disaster

She wanted to curl up and die

The truffle-wrapped grape she’d called a canape

To the horror of waiters nearby.

On the subject of canapés, they are officially my favourite food. They are like a magnificent banquet, of the sort enjoyed by a miniaturised Peter the Great. If I could eat canapés all day every day then I would, especially the prawny ones, though one can have too much tapenade.

The postage-stamp soupçons of sausage

Were hurriedly handed her way,

And men gathered round her, so glad they had found her

To while the reception away.

“I’m sure that we met at the polo!”

Cried Dickie, or Jono, or Rupe,

“The spring point-to-pointing was most disappointing,

The damp gave the labradors croup.”

Conversations at weddings are often rather dull unless you know everyone in the room extremely well. I would love it if someone came up to me at a wedding and instead of saying, “So how do you know Lisa / Chewbacca / Winnebago?” they said, “I got married in May. A cow ate my shoe and I lost my bride in a large puddle.”

Six years ago I was lying in Frimley Hospital clutching son number 2 and thinking how peculiar he smelled. The sun was blazing outside. Seven years prior to that, FA Cup Final Day was a warm and drunken first date in Soho with my future husband. If excitement’s your thing, go for a May wedding. If you want a little certainty, opt for January and fleece-lined underwear. Me? I went for a full-out thunderstorm in July.